Congress released nearly 200 pages of newly uncovered emails involving former Secretary of StateHillary Rodham Clinton, raising questions Monday about whether the Obama administration and the Democratic presidential candidate herself were truthful when they said they turned over all of her email communications on Benghazi.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the select House committee looking into the 2012 terrorist attack in Libya, demanded the State Department say whether it has the emails — a way of testing whether the administration withheld them against the wishes of the committee, or whether Mrs. Clintonnever turned them over in the first place, contradicting her public statements.

Mr. Gowdy gave the department a deadline of the end of the day Monday.

“Once again the Benghazi Committee uncovers information that should already be part of the public record but was not made available to the American people or congressional investigators,” Mr. Gowdy said.

Mr. Blumenthal turned them over to the committee himself and has also been deposed by the committee behind closed doors.

Democrats countered that “many” of the emails had been turned over before and said Mr. Gowdy’s decision to release the set Monday was a political effort to tarMrs. Clinton.

“Before today, Chairman Gowdy had not officially released a single email from a single witness in this entire investigation, which has lasted more than a year. Now, he has apparently decided that this one witness is so critical that his emails — and his alone — must be released,” said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Benghazi probe.

Mrs. Clinton has admitted she set up and used her own email server and account during her time at the State Department, which meant her communications weren’t able to be searched under open-records or congressional information requests, as required by law.

Prodded by Mr. Gowdy’s committee last year, nearly two years after she left officeMrs. Clinton turned over to the State Department about 30,000 messages she decided were related to official business. She said she withheld and expunged another 32,000 messages, and says she has wiped the server clean to prevent anyone from recovering any of them.

The State Department is under a court order to produce all of the emails publicly, though it claimed to have already given Mr. Gowdy’s committee all emails related to the Benghazi investigation.

Mr. Gowdy said the latest releases, however, poke a hole in that version, saying that eitherMrs. Clintondidn’t actually turn over all appropriate messages to her former employer, or else the State Departmentdidn’t comply with the committee’s demand for information.

Democrats have called for Mr. Gowdy to release the transcript of the committee’s deposition of Mr. Blumenthal, which took place last week, saying it would show there was nothing nefarious in the arrangement between him and Mrs. Clinton.

Mr. Cummings said the transcript has been available since last week and would put the new emails in context.

“By the chairman’s own admission, these emails have absolutely nothing to do with the attacks in Benghazi, and their selective release demonstrates the Select Committee’s singular focus on attacking Hillary Clinton and her bid for president,” the congressman said.

Whistle blower reveals secret U.S. program to recruit, train, and provide visas to ‘terrorists’

IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW how sausages are made, don’t start reading Visas forAl Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the Worldby Michael Springmann. The sausages in this case: the string of too-easily-swallowed accounts of bloody events in the “global war on terror,” served up daily with relish by the mainstream media. In reality these sausages are filled with tainted meat that’s making everyone sick.

Springmann is a brave whistle blower living in Washington, D.C. He’s written an accessible book, safe to digest, highlighting details of the corruption of the American Empire (and its accomplices, including Canada) as he experienced them from the inside during his years with the U.S. State Department.

While he served as a visa officer in the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for instance, he was obliged under threat of dismissal to issuevisas to persons hired clandestinely by the CIA to become trained-in-the-USA terrorists. Most of these psychopathic thugs were clearly and legally unqualified to be issued visas. There is every reason to believe the “Visas for Terrorists” program remains fully operative today.It takes a lot of expendable terrorists to run a global terrorism op.

Springmann places his experiences both within the context of the historical roots of the U.S. Empire and within its current ongoing global destabilization project.

And that only covers the bureaucratic aspect. Even more sobering is his sketch of human rights violations: torture, assassinations, massacres including bombings of markets, invasions and occupations of countries, destabilization of nations and regions.

Not to mention the flouting of international laws. This dimension includes gross infringements on national sovereignty, the casual violation of treaties and ho-hum everyday general lawlessness, risking even the threat of nuclear annihilation.

All this before taking into account the moral dimension, in which trashing the Ten Commandments is just an opening trifle.

“My story shows how things really work,” Springmann writes, correctly. In the book’s 250 pages he names names, dates, times and places – presumably opening himself up to lawsuits, should there be anything here that the individuals named deem libelous. They might think twice, however, since Springmann is a lawyer by profession and knows his way around the Empire’s capital – as well as some of its outlying ramparts such as Stuttgart, New Delhi and especially Jeddah.

Stinging in itself, Springmann’s book also can be read as an authenticating companion to Michel Chossudovsky’s Towards a World War III Scenario (2012) and The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” Against Humanity (2015). Along the way, both authors deal, to one extent or another, with the ideological, hubristic and increasingly bellicose role of the Harper government as handmaiden to the American Empire, including military involvements in Libya, Serbia and the Ukraine. Springmann necessarily refers very little to Canada, but to read his account of the cowardly and unnecessary rain of death inflicted on Libya, for instance, is to be obliged as a Canadian to think of Harper’s enthusiasm and pride in having this country share in the slaughter and destabilization carried out under the Orwellian “responsibility to protect” notion.

Springmann quotes Maximilian C. Forte who notes that before the attack Libya enjoyed the highest Human Development Index (a UN measurement of well-being) in all Africa. “After Western military forces destroyed the country the Index only records the steep collapse of all indicators of well-being. More Libyans were killed with intervention than without. It was about control, about militarizing Africa,” Forte argues.

What Springmann brings uniquely to the table is his firsthand knowledge of precisely how the USA recruits terrorists (no quotation marks needed), sends them to the USA for training and then deploys them to carry out murders, torture, bombings and more. The bloody mayhem carried out by these thousands of paid mercenaries – ostensibly beheading-habituated “jihadists” fighting against democracy, decency and the USA and its “allies – is planned, organized and funded by none other than the same USA and its allies. It’s a global false flag operation – the largest by far in history.

As Springmann on page 65 writes of the “Visas for Terrorists Program:”

This was not an ad hoc operation, conceived and carried out in response to a specific foreign policy issue. Rather, it was another of too many CIA efforts to destroy governments, countries, and politicians disfavored by the American “establishment” in its “bipartisan” approach to matters abroad. Whether it was opposing the imaginary evils of communism, the fictitious malevolence of Islam, or the invented wickedness of Iran, America and its intelligence services, brave defenders of “The City Upon A Hill,” sought out and created fear and loathing of peoples and countries essentially engaged in efforts to better their lives and improve their political world. Along the way, Agency-sponsored murders, war crimes, and human rights violations proved to be good business. Jobs for the Clandestine Service (people who recruit and run spies), sales of weapons and aircraft, as well as the myriad items needed to control banks, countries and peoples all provided incomefor and benefits to American companies.

That the American Empire has been able to carry out such a massive illegal program for so long is the saddest of commentaries on how deep the rot is, how effective the secrecy, how complicit the media.

As to the span of dangerous widespread deception, Springmann notes that Rahul Bedi wrote in Jane’s Defence Weekly on September 14, 2001 that beginning in 1980 “thousands [of mujahideen] were … brought to America and made competent in terrorism by Green Berets and SEALS at US government East Coast facilities, trained in guerilla warfare and armed with sophisticated weapons.”

The point is made repeatedly that Al Qaeda and now ISIS/ISIL/the Islamic State are essentially “Made in USA” entities, brought into being and organized for the Empire’s purposes. Among the elements that make possible such a vast fraud are deception, compartmentalization and secrecy. Springmann quotes attorney Pat Frascogna, “a man with FOIA expertise,” about secrecy and its purpose:

Thus whether it be learning the dirty and unethical business practices of a company or the secrets of our government, the same deployment of denials and feigning ignorance about what is really going on are the all-too-common methods used to keep the truth from the light of day.

Langley recruited the Arab-Afghans so clandestinely that the terrorists didn’t know they had been recruited. They thought that they had found a battlefield on their own, or through the Internet or through Twitter or through television…

Frascogna’s observation intersects with Springmann’s on-the-job experiences as a visa officer in Jeddah starting in 1987. Springmann was repeatedly overruled when he turned down disqualified applicants for U.S. visas. He writes:

As I later learned to my dismay, the visa applicants were recruits for the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union’s armed forces. Further, as time went by, the fighters, trained in the United States, went on to other battlefields: Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. They worked with the American intelligence services and the State Department to destabilize governments the United States opposed. While it’s no secret, most knowledgeable people still refuse to talk about this agenda.

As Springmann learned, “the average percentage of intelligence officers to real diplomats at a given Foreign Service post is about one in three. My experience in Jeddah, Stuttgart, and New Delhi might place it higher—at least 50 percent, if not more.” According to the Anti-CIA Club of Diplomats: Spooks in U.S. Foreign Service [sic], a twelve-page, 1983 Canadian publication (see namebase.org), the percentage is 60 percent.

“At Jeddah,” Springmann writes, “to the best of my knowledge, out of some twenty US citizens assigned to the consulate, only three people, including myself, worked for the Department of State.The rest were CIA or NSA officials or their spouses.” Elsewhere Springmann suggests that essentially the CIA runs the State Department, and that this is true of many other U.S. government departments and agenciesas well. It seems that it’s almost impossible to over-estimate the reach of the CIA’s tentacles or the overweening treason of its nonstop black ops and unconstitutional operations domestically.

Springmann toward the end of the book refers to the beginnings of the CIA. It’s interesting for this reviewer to think that he was 13 years of age in 1947 when U.S. president Harry Truman agreed with the National Security Council (NSC) to secretly create the CIA and NSA. I remember that in my teenage years a few of my peers said there “was something” called “the CIA.” This was around the time a few people also said there “was something” called “the Mafia.” The consensus was that both ideas were very far-fetched.

In 1948 Truman approved yet another NSC initiative, providing for “propaganda, economic warfare;preventive direct action, including sabotage, antisabotage, demolition and evacuationmeasures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerillas, and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.” That’s a tabula rasa if there ever was one: a license for lawlessness.

The CIA’s twisted hits have just kept coming. It’s worth noting that Truman didn’t single-handedly initiate this monstrosity. The dark recesses of the Deep State, as Peter Dale Scott calls it, are where the demonic entity was spawned. Ever since, Frankenstein’s monster has been a harmless schoolboy by comparison.

To read of the rape of Libya with active Canadian military complicity makes for difficult reading. The lies are piled as high as the bodies, and these two categories are insuperably paired.

Equally sordid, especially in light of Stephen Harper’s enthusiasm for expanding the war on Russia (the economic sanctions and the diplomatic exclusion of Russia from the G8 are forms of warfare, not to mention decades of covert* military incursion by the West onto the territory of the former USSR and now the Russian Federation, as described in Visas forAl Qaeda) is to read some of the history of the Ukraine. “The West’s” meddling in the Ukraine has a long illicit pedigree. As Springmann writes:

It seems that the CIA had problems [in the immediate post World War II period] distinguishing between underground groups and above-ground armies. Langley used Marshall Plan money to support a guerrilla force in the Ukraine, called “Nightingale.” Originally established in 1941 by Nazi Germany’s occupation forces, and working on their behalf, “Nightingale” and its terrorist arm (made up of ultranationalist Ukrainians as well as Nazi collaborators)murdered thousands of Jews, Soviet Union supporters, and Poles.

Even relatively recently, since the so-called Orange revolution in the Ukraine made events there eminently newsworthy, I can’t remember seeing in the mainstream media a single substantial article dealing with the historical relationships between the Ukraine and Russia going back to World War II, nor such an article laying out the history of the involvement –overt or covert – of “the West” in the Ukraine.

Instead, we see the surreal ahistorical likes of the top headline in The New York Times International Weekly for June 13-14, “Russia is Sowing Disunity,” by Peter Baker and Steven Erlanger. They report breathlessly in the lead paragraph: “Moscow is leveraging its economic power, financing European political parties and movements, and spreading alternative accounts of the Ukraine conflict, according the American and European officials.

True to the narrative of “the West” as a pitiful giant facing a powerful and expansionist Russia, the writers posit that the “consensus against Russian aggression” is “fragile.

The drift of this NYT yarn, typical of Western propaganda across the board, is that there remains in effect a behemoth “Soviet empire” surreptitiously shipping “Moscow gold” to dupes in “green movements” and so on. Even a former American national intelligence officer on Russia, Fiona Hill, now at the Brookings Institution, told the writers: “The question is how much hard evidence does anyone have?

Maybe this NYT propaganda, like its clones across the mainstream media, is not ahistorical after all. The story comes across rather as an historical relic of the Cold War – found in a time capsule in a fallout shelter – that the NYT editors decided to publish as a prank. A sausage.

* Military action by “the West” has not always been covert. Springmann notes that American and Japanese soldiers were dispatched to Russia in 1917 to squelch the fledgling Russian revolution. The soldiers were part of what was called the Allied Expeditionary Force. Winston Churchill for his part said: “We must strangle the Bolshevik baby in its crib.” Springmann might have noted that Canadian soldiers were part of the AEF.

As I was saying on my previous article: One-Eyed Terror Leader’s Government Connections

As I was saying the Western Internet newspapers tend to forget what they write, here is an article about Belmokhtar which was written 01.23.134:45 AM ET by the Daily Beast….

Jihadist behind the desert attack that left scores dead may have once worked as an Algerian informant,U.S. intelligence officials believe. By Eli Lake and Jamie Dettmer

The Jihadist mastermind of last week’s deadly raid on a natural gas facility in the Sahara Desert may once have worked as an agent for Algeria’s secretive internal security agency (Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité or DRS), according to current and former U.S. intelligence officers.

The jihadist leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar made a name for himself as far back as the 1990s as a successful smuggler earning him the nickname in some circles as “Marlboro Man” for his exploits as a cigarette smuggler. Last year, Belmokhtar broke away from al Qaeda’s North Africa affiliate after being passed over for promotion, and formed a new group called the “Signed in Blood” battalion. On Monday in a video posted to the Internet, he claimed responsibility for the assault on the gas facility.

“There have been persistent questions going back to the 1990s about the ultimate allegiance of many of the emirs of the Algerian jihad movement,” said John Schindler, a former National Security Agency (NSA) counterintelligence officer whose specialty is Algeria’s jihadist insurgency. “Algerian defectors have named several emirs as [Algerian security] agents in the past including Belmokhtar.” And, Schindler said, “it was widely believed in U.S. counterintelligence circles that he was an … agent.”

While his current status is difficult to assess, Schindler stressed that he didn’t believe Belmokhtar was acting on behalf of the Algerian security agency in the hostage-taking this month. But Schindler did point out that Belmokhtar managed to maneuver for years in Algeria as a smuggler and militant without being caught, and often eluded authorities at the last-minute.

A senior U.S. intelligence officer said Belmokhtar was never a formal agent of the DRS but that he worked in a position similar to a confidential informant for a big city police force. “His cooperation with DRS had to do with the particular politics of the Islamist insurgency during its early stages and ceased once their interests no longer aligned,” this officer said.

A European intelligence officer, who declined to be named, says the politics of the region has at times been highly complex with “temporary marriages of convenience” and shifting divisions and alliances forming around trafficking deals that cross over ideological lines. “There’s a lot of money to be made from smuggling and elements in the intelligence services in the region have also had their fingers in the pie.”

The CIA and the Algerian embassy in Washington Tuesday declined to comment for this article. Another U.S. intelligence officer, though, told The Daily Beast that North Africa terrorism analysts have long suspected a connection between Belmokhtar and the Algerian DRS, but that definitive proof was hard to come by. “For the most part this is a black box and we don’t have definitive proof,” said the officer, who requested anonymity. ****Lets not forget that the Algerian DRS works together with the French DGSE which the DGSE works together with the CIA, Mi6 and Mossad)

Belmokhtar managed to maneuver for years in Algeria as a smuggler and militant without being caught and often eluded authorities at the last minute

The suspicion about Belmokhtar, however, has been shared in the past between U.S. government agencies, documents show. A 2009 cable disclosed by Wikileaks from the U.S. embassy in Bamako, Mali—the war-torn country that borders Algeria and is currently a safe haven for Belmokhtar’s group—recounts the suspicions of a prominent Tuareg leader named Ag Ghalla about Belmokhtar (his name is spelled Moctar bel Moctar in the cable).

The cable dated March 18, 2009 recounts how Ag Ghalla, who was assigned to a Malian consulate in Tamanrasset, Algeria said he asked Algerian interlocutors on several occasions: “Isn’t he working for you?”

The cable, which was sent to the State Department and shared with the CIA and U.S. Africa Command, went on to say “Ag Ghalla professed to be as confused as everyone else regarding the Algerian government’s reticence to go after bel Moctar’s camps in northern Mali. He said he could only conclude that bel Moctar was receiving support from certain quarters of the Algerian government, and then cited bel Moctar’s legendary reputation for last-minute escapes and uncanny knack for never being at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a specialist on al Qaeda, said he did not know if Belmokhtar had indeed at one point been an Algerian government agent. But he did say, “You have a number of jihadi figures who have approached intelligence agencies about serving as double agents, not because they wanted to betray the jihadi cause but rather because they thought they could play the agencies and get more information about their thinking about the jihadis.” Other intelligence sources remain skeptical also that Belmokhtar would have been betraying the jihadi cause.

Suspicions about Belmokhtar are emergingas hostages and their families from more than a dozen countries recounted to their local media stories of survival and death in the desert. Meanwhile, Canadian authorities were left scrambling in the wake of claims by the Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal that two Canadians were among the 29 militants killed at the remote In Amenas natural gas facility 60 miles from the Libyan border.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar. (SITE Intel Group, via AP)

The Algerian premier said one of them, who used the Moroccan name of ‘Chedad’, coordinated the attack. He says the Canadianswere of Arab descent, prompting terrorism experts to speculate whether either or both were Algerian by birth. Several Al Qaeda-linked Canadian citizens in the past have originated from Algeria.

Canada’s Foreign Minister John Baird told Canadian television that the country’s intelligence service is trying to identify “these alleged Canadians.” Other Canadian officials cautioned that the passports found on the dead militants could be forged. However, several hostage survivors have reported that one of their captors spoke with a strong North American accent.

In April 2012, the head of Canada’s spy agency said they had tracked 60 Canadians who had traveled to the Gulf, Pakistan, or Afghanistan to join Al Qaeda or similar terrorist groups.

A handful of Canadians of Arab descent have been publicly implicated in Al Qaeda activities or imprisoned for terrorism. They include Faker Ben Abdelazziz Boussora a 49-year-old who was born in Tunis and has a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head. His nom de guerre is Abu Yusif al-Tunisi. Along with a Montreal companion, Abderraouf Jdey, he was identified on a 2002 videotape found in the Afghanistan home of the late Al Qaeda military chief Mohammed Atef, pledging to die as a martyr, or shaheed.

Another is Kuwaiti-born Amro Badr Abou el-Maati, who has been described as “Canada’s most wanted terrorist,” and Ahmed Ressam, nicknamed the “Millennium Bomber,” who was born in Algeria in May 1967 and was convicted for attempting to bomb Los Angeles International airport on New Year’s Eve 1999. Ressam is serving a 37-year sentence.

Other Canadians linked to Al Qaeda include the Khadr family. The father, Ahmed Said Khadr, has been alleged to have been a close associate of Osama Bin Laden, and his son Omar pled guilty to killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan and conspiring with Al Qaeda. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have alleged “the entire family is affiliated with al Qaeda and has participated in some form or another with these criminal extremist elements.”

Four years ago, a Canadian, Momin Khawaja, was jailed for 10 years for his role in a fertilizer bomb plot in Britain. The 33-year-old made several trips from his home in Ottawa to the U.K. He said he was seeking a wife.

Sources from Belmokhtar’s group told London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Alawsat that despite losing all the militants in the attack—three were captured alive—they consider the raid “successful by all standards.” In the video Belmokhtar released on Monday (Jan 21), he said the assailants were ready to die. “They pledged before God to achieve victory and restore pride or attain martyrdom and paradise.”

CAIRO • The U.S military says it launched weekend airstrikes targeting and likely killing an al-Qaida-linked militant leader in eastern Libya charged with leading the attack on a gas plant in Algeria in 2013 that killed at least 35 hostages.

An Islamist with ties to Libyan militants, however, said the airstrikes missed Mokhtar Belmokhtar.****(We know for a fact that the US MILITARY does not miss…. I am convinced that he was warned by the Rogue CIA/MOSSAD to leave the premisses as its going to be hit. Lets not forget Bin Laden the bogey man is dead we have to resurrect another bogey man what better than this psychopath… although we do have enough psychopaths in Libya which you could pick from let me name you a few:Bady, Belhaj who wants to lead Libya to the 21st Century democratically by killing all Libyan who oppose him, there is his good friend Sadi another nut case for hire don’t be fooled all these psychopaths are hired by CIA/MI5/6/MOSSAD to terrorize all Arab nations and Europe till Europe declares war to all Arab nations that is their goal.)

Instead, the missiles killed four members of a Libyan extremist group that the U.S. has linked to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. ***(Instead of putting Hillary and her crew in Jail for the MURDER OF CHRIS STEVENS AND THREE SPECIAL FORCES which there is proof about it, the US still goes on with the lie that the Libyan extremist did it….not that I feel sorry for the extremist being dead but we have to put the facts: Stevens death was an inside job, we know it and so does the US foreign policy know it…. We know for a fact that the extremists who are installed in Libya are FINANCED, TRAINED BY THE USA AND ISRAEL these terrorists are under their payroll and lapdogs to bring Libya to its knees…. proof is also that Belmokhtar was warned it isn’t the first time.)

U.S. officials said they are still assessing the results of the Saturday strike, but Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said the military believes the strike was successful and hit the target. Neither U.S. officials nor the Libyan government provided proof of Belmokhtar’s death, which likely requires a DNA test or an announcement by Belmokhtar’s group that he was killed.

“I can confirm that the target of last night’s counterterrorism strike in Libya was Mokhtar Belmokhtar,” Warren said Sunday.

AP Photo / Anis Belghoul FILE – In this Jan. 21, 2013 file photo, Algerian firemen carry a coffin containing the body of a person killed during the gas facility hostage situation at the morgue in Ain Amenas, Algeria. The U.S. said the military launched an airstrike Saturday, June 13, 2015, targeting an al-Qaida leader in eastern Libya who has been charged with leading the attack on a gas plant in Algeria in 2013 that killed 35 hostages, including three Americans.

“Belmokhtar has a long history of leading terrorist activities as a member of (al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb), is the operational leader of the al-Qaida-associated al-Murabitun organization in northwest Africa and maintains his personal allegiance to al-Qaida.”

A U.S. official said two F-15 fighter jets launched multiple 500-pound bombs in the attack. The official was not authorized to discuss the details of the attack publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity. Authorities say no U.S. personnel were on the ground for the assault.

But this isn’t the first time authorities have claimed to have killed Belmokhtar, a militant believed to be 43 who reportedly lost his eye in combat and fought in Afghanistan. He was one of a number of Islamist fighters who have battled Algeria’s government since the 1990s, later joining al-Qaida.

An al-Qaeda letter obtained by The Associated Press suggests Belmoktar pocketed about US$1-million for the release of Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler in Niger four years ago.**** and the United States wants us to believe that he is not under the payroll? We know for a fact that neither America or Canada negotiate with terrorists…. What is wrong with this picture?)

The letter was sent by al-Qaeda’s North African branch to Belmoktar, who split from the group to conduct his own operations, including the Fowler kidnapping in December 2008.

Fowler, the highest-ranking UN official in Niger, and his colleague Louis Guay, were kidnapped and held for four months before being released in April 2009.

The letter said that a plan to force concessions in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan was stymied when Belmoktar struck his own deal for about $1-million for both men. ****As it has been proven that Bin Laden was USA proxy man so is Belmoktar… with all the Intel, spooks, special forces, snipers, NSA and other Secret agencies the US wants us to believe that they could not kill this man???????? If they are so incompetent then they should sent Rambo or Iron Man to do the job…

InterpolInterpol has issued an international arrest warrant for Moktar Belmoktar in connection with the kidnapping of Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler and his colleague Louis Guay in December 2008.

Belmokhtar is also known as Belaouer the One Eyed, Abou al-Abbes and Mister Marlboro, the last name a play on the fact he’s accused of smuggling contraband cigarettes through the Sahara and the Sahel.

The U.S. filed terrorism charges in 2013 against Belmokhtar in connection with the Algeria attack. Officials have said they believe he remained a threat to U.S. and Western interests. Belmokhtar had just split off from al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb to start his own franchise.

The Libyan government in a statement Sunday said that the strike targeting Belmokhtar came after consultation with the U.S. so that America could take action against a terror leader there.

Belmokhtar unleashed a reign of terror years ago, in furtherance of his self-proclaimed goal of waging bloody jihad against the West

One government official in Libya said an airstrike in the northeastern coastal city of Ajdabiya hit a group of Islamic militants also believed linked to al-Qaida and that it killed five and wounded more. He said the group that was wounded later fought the Libyan military that guarded the hospital there, leading to a hourslong battle. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. The official couldn’t confirm that was the same strike that killed Belmokhtar.

The Islamist, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals in restive Libya, told The Associated Press early Monday that Belmokhtar wasn’t at the site of the U.S. airstrike.He said the strike killed four Ansar Shariah membersin Ajdabiya, some 850 kilometres east of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

American officials have linked Ansar Shariah to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. ****Who by the way, were under the American embassy payroll to protect the US Consulate in Benghazi together with another brigade called 17 February…. so again I ask what is wrong with this picture????

The charges filed against Belmokhtar by federal law enforcement officials in Manhattan included conspiring to support al-Qaida and use of a weapon of mass destruction. Additional charges of conspiring to take hostages and discharging a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence carry the death penalty.

At the time, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a release that Belmokhtar “unleashed a reign of terror years ago, in furtherance of his self-proclaimed goal of waging bloody jihad against the West.”

Authorities also offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Belmokhtar. ****So why don’t they ask the GNC in Tripoli to give them the information? Or one of the leaders of Daesh or better yet why don’t the ask Belmokhtar’s buddy Abdulhakim Belhaj he knows were he is hiding actually he has his mobile number on speed dial… oh! yes I forgot they can not involve another notorious Terrorist like Belhaj as he must be installed as the new LEADER OF LIBYA…. and showing such connections would put in jeopardy the UN, USA AND THE EUROPEAN UNION for being in cohorts with a the most wanted and hated man in the planet. Even a young Libyan boy could tell them were he is hiding but in reality they do not want to capture him as he is an asset for them in North Africa…. Please do not be fooled by the media and American foreign policy…

Benghazi investigators ponder: Is State Dept lying, or is Hillary?

By Byron York

House Select Committee on BenghaziChairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. speaks to reporters before a closed door meeting in the House Visitors Center at the U.S. Capitol June 16, 2015 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Last March, when Hillary Clinton made her first public comments on the secret email system she maintained while secretary of state, she took care to say she had turned over everything to the State Department. “I … provided all my emails that could possibly be work-related,” Clinton told reporters. “I believe I have met all of my responsibilities and … the State Department will be able, over time, to release all of the records that were provided.”

The message was clear. Clinton had turned over everything, and the State Department would make it all public.

Then State sent Clinton’s emails that concerned Libya to the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Chairman Trey Gowdy immediately expressed skepticism about the claim that everything had been turned over. “There are gaps of months and months and months,” Gowdy said.

Gowdy’s suspicions appear to have been confirmed. As part of the committee’s questioning of Clinton friend and defender Sidney Blumenthal, who exchanged many emails with Clinton on the subject of Libya, Blumenthal turned over a bunch of emails with Clinton that the committee had never seen before. The State Department had not given them to the committee when State originally turned over what were purported to be all of Clinton’s Libya-related emails.

Which led investigators to ask: Did the State Department fail to turn over all the Clinton emails it had pertaining to Libya? Or did Clinton not give all her Libya-related emails to the State Department, which in turn could not pass them on to the committee?

Shorter version: Did the State Department withhold information from the committee, or did Clinton?

The first possibility is entirely consistent with State Department foot-dragging on Benghazi that has been going on from the beginning. Just last month, Gowdy told Secretary of State John Kerry that “the pace of State Department document production has become an impediment to the progress of the committee.”

The second possibility — that Clinton did not turn over all of her work emails as claimed — would call into question everything she has said publicly about the secret email system. That could, in turn, reignite the Benghazi issue in the presidential campaign.

Clinton, of course, has said nothing about the Blumenthal emails. As far as the State Department is concerned — well, try to make sense of this exchange Wednesday between reporters and spokesman John Kirby:

QUESTION: You said that the emails that were provided by Mr. Blumenthal to the committee … were not shared with the Department. Does that mean that the committee didn’t share them, or you did not have them to give to the committee?

KIRBY: No, no. I meant that the documents that Mr. Blumenthal turned over to the — we — they were not shared with us either by him or by the committee.

QUESTION: Well, did you have them?

KIRBY: I can’t speak to their contents.

What does that mean? Certainly the Benghazi investigators don’t know. When the State Department originally turned over the Clinton emails earlier this year, Gowdy asked State to certify that it was turning over all of Clinton’s communications related to Libya. State officials would not do that, arguing they only had what Clinton gave them, although they accepted Clinton’s word that they had everything.

Also baffling to investigators is what is going on with Blumenthal. The materials he turned over could undermine Clinton’s claim of having given all of her work-related emails to the State Department. Yet Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton acolyte who owes his livelihood to the Clintons — during the time in question, he received $10,000a month from the Clinton Foundation and another $10,000 from a Clinton-related media watchdog group— seems the last person in the world who would give Republicans anything they could use against Clinton. So that is another mystery.

This latest tangle illustrates the difficulty Gowdy and his fellow lawmakers face in trying to figure out the Benghazi story.Yes, they have made progress — remember, the world would not even know about Clinton’s secret email system had it not been for Gowdy’s committee. But they face a daunting challenge in getting information not only from Clinton but from her inner circle and the State Department. It’s taken a long time to get this far, and there is still quite a way to go.